Cisco kicks off Borderless Networks push with new Integrated Services Router

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 17:00

IT Industry - Strategy

To contribute to this goal, he said the second generation ISR had been built on three pillars: video readiness, service virtualisation and operational efficiency.

"All the new ISR hardware is video ready: the router will understand video encoding and decoding in the same way that the [first generation] ISR understood voice. Service virtualisation means being able to rollout services on demand without truck rolls. Operational efficiency means that it is cheaper to run, easier to manage and easier to install."

Having the ISR video ready meant that it could support a wide range of video applications, traditionally handled by dedicated devices Van Hoof said. "Some of the things we have in mind for the future are on-platform video recording, video quality monitoring, embedded video surveillance and ad hoc videoconferencing."

The key to service virtualisation, he said is the Cisco Service Ready Engine (SRE) "It's generic hardware that can be pre-provisioned and software rolled out remotely. This is what really opens up service virtualisation."

Applications available at launch include Cisco's own wide area application services (WAN optimisation), a controller for Cisco WiFi access points, voicemail, IVR, firewalls, IDS and VPN and SSL security products and network analysis and monitoring. Third party apps include: Nice's voice recording, Sagem's fax over IP software, SingleWire Informacast "a robust, full-featured system that allows you to simultaneously send an audio stream and/or text message to multiple IP phones" and Infoblox Core Network Services - domain name resolution (DNS), IP address assignment (DHCP), and IP address management (IPAM).

The Cisco Application Extension Platform (AXP) is, according to Van Hoof, "a full development environment where organisations can develop apps to run inside the router and have them interact with the network according to the state of the network...You can let you the application understand what is going on in the network and take action accordingly." It is a module for the first generation ISR, announced in April 2008 that will be supported on the new products.

According to Van Hoof, Cisco's rationale behind the development of the ISR G2 is that organisations are becoming increasing reliant on branch networks for customer interaction, branches are expected to fulfil wider roles, but funding available is the same or less.

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